Monday, May 19, 2014

"So does Tamiflu work? From the Cochrane analysis – fully public – Tamiflu does not reduce the number of hospitalisations. There wasn't enough data to see if it reduces the number of deaths. It does reduce the number of self-reported, unverified cases of pneumonia, but when you look at the five trials with a detailed diagnostic form for pneumonia, there is no significant benefit. It might help prevent flu symptoms, but not asymptomatic spread, and the evidence here is mixed. It will take a few hours off the duration of your flu symptoms."

The difference in duration could well be just a statistical artifact. Hardly worth the effort, at any rate.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

So I got sick. For the first time in such a long time that I have trouble remembering the last time... That's been one of the biggest benefits of the Paleo diet, as the flu used to visit like clockwork.

This one was a stomach bug—it's apparently going around, from the symptoms I'd say it's viral.

The immediate sign of it was that the mere thought of food was enough to make me nauseous and dizzy. At which point I decided that instead of getting lunch I would leave the office and go home.

Later, in the evening, my daughter broke out some ice cream. That was appealing!

After eating a few bites I came down with a fever. Literally, in the middle of eating the bowl of ice cream I started getting chills. 99.5, not huge, but I hadn't had a fever prior to that moment.

One of the ways your body disposes of excess carbs is by increasing the metabolic rate. Which is basically what a fever is. And the fact that your body can anticipate the effect of glucose on the metabolism is, as they say, well-established.

So was my two-hour fever after eating some ice cream my body's way of getting rid of the glucose, which it recognized was counter-productive?

I didn't eat anything else until the following evening, and nothing that was high-carb, and the fever didn't come back. But I also didn't try eating more ice cream (which had lost it's appeal after my body reacted to it; I wanted to get better, not conduct an experiment).

Of course the doctors will tell you that you should eat when you have a fever, because your body needs calories. Oy vey... I'm going to stick with grandma's advice: you've got plenty of calories, losing a few pounds (I lost 5) won't kill you, and you should listen to your body. Nausea's about the clearest sign you're going to get...

OK, well that's a nice hypothesis, but it's based on an anecdote. Any support in the scientific literature?

"Specifically, they could suppress viral infection of cells by dismantling the V-ATPase through the lowering of glucose levels. In addition, they could inhibit infection by treating cells with chemical inhibitors of glycolysis, the initial pathway of glucose catabolism. Conversely, influenza viral infection of cells could be increased by giving cells more glucose than normal, the researchers report in the journal Virology.

"The ease with which the researchers could dial viral infection down by controlling glucose levels and thus V-ATPase activity suggested a new strategy for throttling influenza viral infection. "Taken together, we propose that altering glucose metabolism may be a potential new approach to inhibit influenza viral infection," say Adamson and Kohio."

A "new approach". Yeah, listen to grandma, that's radical. Now it's entirely possible that different virii work in different ways, but it does lend some support to the "starve a fever" argument, as starvation (aka ketogenesis) is the easiest way to suppress glucose metabolism!

I drank caffeine, despite this: "Caffeine enhances dehydration." That advice is just not correct, unless you're not used to drinking caffeine. I drank a little vodka last night to settle my stomach, despite this: "Avoid caffeine and alcohol." I have no idea why that worked, but it certainly didn't make things worse, and it helped me sleep. Of course an alcoholic hot toddy is another old grandmother's cure. (I'd make mine minus the sugar, of course.)

The flu did not progress to a more serious case. After a few years of checking doctors' recommendations on many topics, I've learned you're better off ignoring them on a lot of matters. Unless you have a traumatic injury. Especially when they've not read the literature, which is more often than you would expect.

P.S. Apparently the relationship between glucose metabolism and influenza has been known since the 1950s:

"The relatively low toxicity in both experimental animals2 and humans3 of the potent glucose antimetabolite 2-deoxy-D-glucose suggested the feasibility of employing this compound in in vivo influenza virus infection. The present studies, undertaken in the intact chick embryo, demonstrate that the synthesis of influenza virus is markedly inhibited by 2-deoxy-D-glucose. Ancillary studies with in vitro systems show this inhibition to be reversible with glucose and therefore not related to permanent host cell damage."

"The extent of viral replication in the lungs was proportional to blood glucose levels in the mice at the time of infection, and the enhanced susceptibility of diabetic mice was reversed with insulin...."

Although (as I cautioned about above) it doesn't seem to work for all strains:

"...Growth of A/HKx31 (H3N2) virus was also enhanced in diabetic mice, whereas the highly virulent strain A/PR/8/34 (H1N1) showed no difference in virus yields in diabetic and nondiabetic mice..."

So it's worth a shot, as it seems the worst thing that's going to happen is nothing. There don't seem to be any studies done on a ketogenic diet and influenza, however. That would be interesting.

Monday, May 12, 2014

"Since 1978 when Dr. Gabe Mirkin coined the term RICE, Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation have been the gold standard for treating athletic injuries. But now the ice age is melting, and a series of studies that show that injury treatment with cold therapy and total rest may actually delay healing has even Dr. Mirkin changing his mind.

"...A study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined the influence of icing on muscle damage. Data from the study did show that icing delays recovery and should not be the first choice of treatment for injuries. After icing there was an immediate increase in swelling. Indicators of muscle damage increased after application of ice.

"...And research published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine in June, 2013, said that although icing an injury relieved swelling it did not make recovery from muscle damage quicker. If the treatment reduces inflammation it delays healing. This includes the use of anti-inflammatory pain relievers like ibuprofen."

I said I my prior post:

"Now, you might find this hard to believe, but devising a treatment and then never bothering to test it in a scientific fashion is par for the course in the medical profession, as is continuing to use the treatment after it's been shown to have no supporting science behind it and to be of questionable efficacy. People would rather "do something", than do nothing, even if doing nothing is the correct course of action."

Dr. Mirkin obliges to confirm that part of my post as well:

"Mirkin says it is okay to apply ice for pain relief immediately after the injury occurs, but for short periods only. He suggests icing for 10 minutes, removing the ice for 20 minutes, and repeating the process once or twice, but stresses that there is no reason to continue icing more than six hours after injury...."

So it worsens the injury, but you should do it for up to six hours? Ridiculous.

P.S. Dr. Mirkin has a post on his blog that has enough in common with the news article linked to above that I suspect the article is simply a re-purposing of his post. (If you wonder where reporters get their news ideas...) The first comment on that news story is, "Well written and well done. Gabe Mirkin"

But at any rate, he has a nice additional comment that's not included in the news article, and with which I fully agree: